The Life of Rebecca Jones
Page 10
And I do not wish to be buried in that graveyard at Dinas. My remains shall be scattered in the valley. For it is to Maesglasau, with its mists and waters, that I give thanks for my own life.
The land is poor, is quiet—
It is lonely mountain earth.
But again the summer sews
A glossy dress for Cwm Maesglasau;
Time itself just loiters here
In this land, without a care.
T. Llew Jones
I once sought my own continuance in the continuance of the cwm. In the flow of the stream and in the slant of the mountain; in blossom and leaves; in the arrival of swallows in May; in the round of the seasons and the rituals of farming; in the birth of lambs; in shearing; in reaping the hay and harvesting it; in cutting bracken on the slopes of Foel Dinas and Foel Bendin.
I sought my own continuance in the unchanging quietness of Cwm Maesglasau.
I also sought my continuance in the long-standing relationship between my family and the valley. My ancestors have farmed here for many centuries—for nearly a thousand years, according to a note in the family Bible. In 1012, says a short entry in sepia ink, a certain Gethin came to farm at Tynybraich and Maesglasau, followed by a Gruffydd who was his son, with Llywelyn following him, and so on and so on, in a family tree of fathers and grandfathers. These men—and their women, I suppose—witnessed each revolution, renaissance and recession of this last millennium; Glyndŵr’s uprising, the unification of England and Wales, the dissolution of the monasteries, the translation of God’s Word into Welsh, the spreading of the gospel in printed books, the brimstone fire of sermons; speeches and hymns, world wars, and all those revolutions in agriculture, industry, technology.
Continuance
And throughout the decades of my life, I, too, have witnessed many changes. The horse-sledge was replaced by the motor car. Shire horses were replaced by the tractor. After rush lights we went on to use the candle, and then the paraffin lamp, and then electricity. Machines replaced physical beings. Instead of hands—tools. Instead of letters—the telephone. And instead of the telephone, I hear we have messages on a screen. Instead of newspapers we had radio and television. Film came to replace books. Sunday supplanted the Sabbath.
God was cast down from on high. In 1922 the first airplane flew over the cwm at Maesglasau. Today the Royal Air Force practices war maneuvers in the great bowl of the cwm, its killing machines winging past us seconds before the roar, before weaving past Pen yr Allt Isaf and Pen Foel y Ffridd on their way toward Llanymawddwy.
The heavens are filled too with unseen powers, electro-magnetic waves coming from our new Gabriels.
All this has been witnessed by Cwm Maesglasau, but the cwm remains as it was. The quietness continues. My family continues: nowadays my nephew and great-nephew farm seven hundred acres in the cwm, six hundred of them mountain land. The village community still lives on; its culture alive.
And I continue to live in the remoteness of the cwm, in an old, old house. I want for nothing, other than to know that continuance lives in this land. So it was. So it is. So it shall be.
I am deceiving myself, of course. Because I cannot see the erosion of the cwm. We are all blind to the polluting forces of industry, modern farming, global economics. Chernobyl. B.S.E. Foot and Mouth. The threats to indigenous flocks.
Today’s mountain farmer works at a loss. Diversification is mandatory. The tradition of a thousand years risks becoming a theme park, a way of life becoming a matter of presentation. Tradition, a souvenir. The home, a guest house. The family, managers. Custom, a sentimental story. Lives repackaged as history.
The farmyards will be as empty as the meadows when the cars and buses leave.
In times such as these, continuance is a burden of conscience.
According to the entry in the family Bible, we can claim in 2012 that farming has been a way of life in Cwm Maesglasau for a thousand years. I know I shan’t be there. And what of the farm?
They tell me the village is changing. Youngsters leave to seek work; the old die. Newcomers from England buy the houses: the prices are low, the views exquisite. Only a minority wish to immerse themselves in the community, and learn the Welsh language.
So, bilingualism will lead the way, until the village Eisteddfod begins to be conducted in English … And with it the literary society. The women’s group. The gardening club. The knitting group. The drama company. The August agricultural show. The singing festival. The school concert. Children’s thanksgiving. The Christmas service at Llanymawddwy Church. On the schoolyard, on street corners, in the homes.
Continuance never simply continues. It is easily broken.
I have sought my own continuance in that of my family. But what comfort is that in this age of armageddon? And what right have I to expect such a thing? I did not contribute to the family—I never married; never bore children. I loved one man as I might have a husband, and lost him. In my loneliness I wrote. To create. My energy overflowed as time dried up.
And I considered it meet to labour by day, for the night looms and no one can labour when darkness falls.
Hugh Jones
Perhaps this was the family muse, nurtured in the cwm, calling me. The same muse as that of Hugh Jones, and my great-grandfather Evan Jones, another hymnist, and my grandfather Robert Jones the musician and his brother J. J. the poet, and his son Baldwyn the poet and dramatist.
Like Rebecca in the Book of Genesis, I felt forces in my own womb pulling me this way and that. Whether to embrace my ancestors’ traditions, or reject them?
Sitting in the ruin of Maesglasau Bach, I torment myself with a pen and scraps of paper.
“CREATION”
Was it revenge to sunder the mountain in two?
Was it scorn to flood the ravine?
Violation—to bruise the glen with trees?
Deceit—your coming one day to fulfill
The silver whispers on a restless bed?
No seed was planted here by any man,
But those of hope, century upon century,
Awaiting your fruits in this fruitful cwm.
Writing an autobiography entails a “self.” It entails a memory.
The remembering is easy. What else occupies the elderly? Our minds are preoccupied in part with what has passed, in part with what’s to come.
I sometimes think that the act of remembering life gives more pleasure than living itself. We can select, delete, amplify, recreate, interpret memories. But life itself is unpredictable and unruly. Certain things can be recalled at will; others thrown into the bottomless pit of forgetting. We can choose when to laugh and to cry; when to challenge and to submit. Such is the privilege of remembering.
And the self? Which “self” should I remember? I never gave it much thought. It never bothered me much, except when it got hurt. Its form is outlined by other selves: those of my family and friends, the cwm, my writing.
I was a seamstress throughout my life. Today I see before me a patchwork quilt of memories. It keeps me warm in my last winter. My “self” lies perhaps in the act of sewing the seams, and in the seams themselves. The material is there: remnants of clothing worn by family and friends; broadcloth from the world; the shimmering satin of Cwm Maesglasau; the velvet of tranquility.
It is composed of contradictory elements.
But no, I deceive myself again. In this case I am not a seamstress. For the quilt is made of paper. Written words are the material’s print. The thread: my family’s story. The seams: the clauses of generations. The stitches themselves: life’s mutations; the mutation which impelled me to seek tranquility at the far end of Cwm Maesglasau, which forced Bob to become an unwilling farmer, and which exiled Gruffydd, William and Lewis from the cwm, compelling one to become an Anglican vicar in England, another a gifted linguist with a dozen languages in his possession, and the last a prize-winning painter.
This work is unfinished. And thus it will remain until the end of the family, until the
end of the cwm.
My own work on it has almost ended. All I need to do is sew the lining, to conceal the seams and to make it soft on the skin when I rest shrouded beneath it.
Only one material will do for that lining. It is a rather special material which cannot be seen, heard, touched, tasted nor smelled.
I believe that I am on the verge of finding it. Was it not yesterday that it flowed past, meandering away from me toward the big field?
Unexpectedly, it was the rain that came after the mist. It poured down, drowning the land. The stream increased in volume and breadth.
It rained and rained, beating down on the old monks of Cwm Maesglasau, in retribution for their sins:
Rain comes from the dampness and wetness of the earth and sea; and is raised to the sky by the heat of the sun, where it mingles and forms clouds; and after that, by the will of the lord above, it is released and falls down on the earth again in cascading showers.
Hugh Jones
I walk through that downpour toward Llidiart y Dŵr, and rejoice as I approach my kin at Tynybraich. And the rain flows down my cheeks, as though the stream itself were flowing over me, baptizing me into another life.
Rebecca Jones died of diphtheria in 1916.
She was eleven years old. This book is a
tribute to the life she might have lived.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTES
As soon as I read Angharad’s book, I knew it was a pocket masterpiece which deserved a wider audience. And I really enjoyed the experience of translating it: I only hope that I’ve done it justice. Of course, no translation can truly capture the original, especially a book which is so quintessentially Welsh as O! Tyn y Gorchudd. I wanted to mirror its sensitivity, its shyness, its quiet reflectiveness and its ancient dignity. A book further away from Trainspotting you couldn’t wish to find.
Maesglasau is a living, breathing place, and this book portrays a way of life which is disappearing quickly, while also recognizing the valley as an arena for eternity itself. Quietly, the people go about their daily lives—but they are capable of heroism and deep compassion; somehow they’re aware that time is a great silver web stretching away into the far distance, and they can only marvel at its artistry before they’re caught in it themselves, after a lifetime of hard work and spiritual endeavor.
So this is the story of a beautiful valley and an amazing family, both ordinary and extraordinary, with three blind brothers and a gift for languages; the story of a mountain stream as it journeys toward the sea, and the story of an upland tribe as it journeys toward a new world.
Seemingly simple, it has a deceptive depth: many people feel that they’ve read a substantial saga rather than a slim volume.
At the end of his Booker prize-winner The Sea, John Banville uses a simple analogy to capture a deep emotional insight: he describes the way a wave can pick you up when you’re standing in the sea and suddenly deposit you elsewhere. That’s the feeling I had when I’d finished reading this book: it took my breath away.
I hope you enjoy this book as much as its original readers have, since it is one of the most respected and popular publications of recent times. Indeed, many readers have been impelled to visit the valley after reading about it. Like me they have responded to the book’s finely wrought craftsmanship and its simple intimacy; it’s as though the story had been written by a member of your own family.
I commend it to you.
LLOYD JONES
Llanfairfechan, February 2010
ANGHARAD PRICE is a novelist, critic and translator, and now Senior Lecturer in the School of Welsh at Bangor University. Her first novel, Tania’r Tacsi, was published in 1999, followed in 2002 by O! Tyn y Gorchudd, translated here as The Life of Rebecca Jones. This second novel was awarded the Prose Medal at the 2002 National Eisteddfod and named Book of the Year by the Welsh Arts Council in 2003. A third novel, Caersaint, was shortlisted for the Welsh Arts Council Book of the Year in 2011.
LLOYD JONES is a translator and writer whose novel Mr. Cassini was the winner of the Welsh Arts Council Book of the Year in 2007.